Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Director Larry Wolk's above comments on the connection between fracking and adverse health effects reflect a clear bias toward discounting any study, research, connection, or assertion of a relationship.

Now the release of a new study from his agency provides Wolk another opportunity to dismiss the research, researchers and citizen organizations working to protect Coloradans from the unchecked onslaught of fracking. But does a closer look at this limited meta study (examining only 35 studies) support his conclusions?

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Those 35 studies were organized into 27 categories and sub-categories by CDPHE, according to health effects such as cancer-hospitalizations, birth defects-congenital heart, and respiratory-asthma. Of the 27 categories, CDPHE judged the evidence for a conclusive risk in 11 to be "mixed," that is, with research both showing clear evidence of a risk relationship and research not finding a relationship. The evidence in two categories was felt to be "limited" which, to the CDPHE, meant that although the research showed evidence of a causal risk, the studies were faulted for what it termed "limitations."

Another 11 categories were judged to have been "insufficiently" studied. Only three of the 27 categories were judged as "failing to show an association." In other words, for 24 of the 27 categories examined in the CDPHE's meta study of health risk, it could not conclude there was no relationship between oil and gas fracking activities and negative health effects. For 24 of 27, it cannot assure public health and environmental safety.

There have been other, more extensive meta studies carried out on peer-reviewed research concerning the environmental and public health effects of fracking. A meta study done by Jake Hays and Seth B. C. Shonkoff, published in the Journal of the PLOS (Public Library of Science) looked at all qualifying, peer-reviewed research over the period 2009-15, approximately 685 studies.

They found that "84 percent of public health studies contain findings that indicate public health hazards, elevated risks, or adverse health outcomes; 69 percent of water quality studies contain findings that indicate potential, positive association, or actual incidence of water contamination; and 87 percent of air quality studies contain findings that indicate elevated air pollutant emissions and/or atmospheric concentrations."

Perhaps Mr. Wolk feels that unless there is absolute, conclusive and irrefutable evidence of fracking-related activities clinically observed to cause a biological human effect (the same tactic used by the tobacco industry to forestall meaningful regulation for decades), nothing should be done. But just as with the tobacco industry and cancer, when dealing with the health of families and children, coupled with both a likely risk of harmful health effects and an entrenched, pernicious, exploitive industry, two principles must be invoked.

The first is the "precautionary principle," accepted as axiomatic in civilized societies, and for which the National Institutes of Health provides this definition: "The precautionary principle asserts that the burden of proof for potentially harmful actions by industry or government rests on the assurance of safety and that when there are threats of serious damage, scientific uncertainty must be resolved in favor of prevention."

We urge Dr. Wolk, a former pediatrician, to stand up for the citizens of the state he serves, to stand against the influence of the oil and gas industry and their representatives in our state government, by advocating for strong, community-based choices on fracking, and by shining a light on the real and likely risks of continuing this dirty, toxic activity.

For as the second relevant principle, Dr. Wolk's own Hippocratic Oath, states in its modern accepted version, "First, do no harm."